University News & Events

A complex fast changing world demands new, creative approaches to everything from corporate strategies to food preparation: Saybrook University is pleased to announce the creation of a unique psychology PhD program specializing Creativity Studies.

Saybrook has a long connection with the study of creativity: one of its founders was legendary psychologist Rollo May, who wrote The Courage to Create, and significant work on creativity was also performed by Saybrook faculty such as Abraham Maslow.

Today Saybrook is home to many of the leading contemporary scholars studying creativity, including Ruth Richards, Editor of Everyday Creativity, and Steven Pritzker, Co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Creativity. Together, they are creating a community that helps students become scholars in their own right.

The program will appeal to students interested in studying every aspect of creativity, including the traditional arts as well as a variety of other fields such as organizational creativity, mental health, education and social transformation. The curriculum will also include research into aspects of everyday creativity including, family life, daily decision making, and relationships. This study of creativity will be both academic and hands on: as they become scholars of creativity theory, students will also apply what they learn to enhancing their own creative process and providing learning skills to help others.

McGraw-Hill has announced that it is re-issuing The Psychology of Existence, the last book that pioneering existential psychologist Rollo May wrote in 2004.

May was one of the founders of Saybrook University, and wrote The Psychology of Existence with Kirk Schneider, a Saybrook graduate who is now also a member of Saybrook's faculty.

The New Existentialists has an interview with Schneider about the continued relevance of The Psychology of Existence, along with a discussion about what it was like to work with May in the last days of his life, getting him a copy of the gally proofs to review just two days before his death.

San Francisco, CA, January 5, 2012 – Saybrook University announced today that it is sponsoring signing events for Chip Conley’s new book, “Emotional Equations” (January 10, Free Press). In the book, Conley, dynamic entrepreneur and author of the bestselling “Peak”, has developed a new lexicon for an emotionally intelligent age by introducing brilliantly simple formulas to help us explore and articulate something that challenges and connects us all: our emotions. Illustrating how to gain greater perspective and create the perfect equation for any situation, equations like “Joy = Love - Fear” and “Despair = Suffering - Meaning” have been reviewed for mathematical and psychological accuracy by leading experts. Conley shows us how to solve these equations (and how to formulate our own) through life examples and stories of inspiring people and role models who worked them through in their own lives.

The three Saybrook University sponsored events will be held in:

· San Francisco January 11

· Los Angeles January 25

· New York February 23

In addition to the above events, Chip Conley will be the keynote speaker at Saybrook University’s residential conference on January 14, 2012. This conference brings together faculty and students from Saybrook’s Graduate Colleges of Psychology and Humanistic Studies and Mind-Body Medicine for intensive classes and workshops in multiple disciplines. Chip Conley will also be the keynote speaker at Saybrook University’s LIOS Graduate College (Leadership Institute of Seattle) graduation on June 18, 2012 in Seattle, Washington.

Mark Schulman, Ph.D., president of Saybrook University today announced the appointment of Chip Conley, award- winning San Francisco entrepreneur and noted author, as the institution’s inaugural scholar-practitioner in residence. The Saybrook University scholar-practitioner in residence program emphasizes the importance of life-long learning, creative curiosity in support of new knowledge, and the application of this knowledge in service to the larger community.

The program is grounded in Saybrook University’s core humanistic values honoring the infinite potential of human beings to grow and change in meaningful ways, regardless of the challenges they face. Saybrook University’s scholar-practitioner in residence program joins a growing number of such programs across the country to bring the lived experience of professional practice and expertise into the realm of higher education – combining “the library and the street”- to prepare graduates to adapt, invent, and reinvent themselves, their organizations, and their communities in response to change and the challenges of the 21st century.

Chip Conley is the founder of Joie de Vivre, California’s preeminent boutique hotel company now growing across the country. Influenced by Abraham Maslow’s theories of humanistic psychology, exemplified by the oft-cited pyramid representing the hierarchy of human needs, Conley revamped his business model to focus on the intangible, higher needs of his company’s three main constituencies – employees, customers and investors. He credits this shift for helping Joie de Vivre triple its annual revenues between 2001 and 2008. He was honored with the Most Innovative CEO in the Bay Area award by “The San Francisco Business Times” based upon this performance.

Join us at an upcoming conference session to engage in an integral part of the Saybrook experience. For 40 years Saybrook University has offered distance education for graduate students. Combining online and residential instruction, our programs foster close contact amongst faculty and learners while offering flexibility. A key component of Saybrook's learning model, residential conference sessions bring faculty and students together, spurring intellectual creativity, collaboration, and mentorship.

Prospective students may attend and observe two sessions at the SFO Westin Hotel in Millbrae, California:

Sunday, January 15, 2012 -- 9:15 am - 12:00 pm PST

Courses and Seminars:Renewing the Encounter Between the Human Sciences, the Arts, and the HumanitiesIntroduction to Person-Centered Expressive Arts for Healing and Social ChangeBuddhist Pathways to HealthSystems Practice: From Systems Thinking to Systems BeingGenerative and Strategic Dialogue: Intro to ORG 7044Trauma and Transformation: The “Human”

Tuesday, January 17, 2012 -- 9:15 am - 12:00 pm PST

Courses and Seminars:Trauma and Transformation: Social DimensionsIntermediate Training and Education in Hypnosis (5620)Movement, Exercise, and HealthResearching Organizations and their Complexity: Exploring Methods That Support a Systems Approach to ChangeCity of San Francisco Initiative: A Collaborative Project OpportunityCreativity and Writing: Beyond the Norm

Attendees will also have the opportunity to meet with faculty and Admissions representatives. To learn more and register, please RSVP HERE!

Saybrook Professor George Kent - who teaches STR 6585 "The Human Right to Adequate Food" - has published Ending Hunger Worldwide, a book that challenges the naïve notion that everyone wants hunger to end. Rather, hunger ensures that some people will work for very low pay, so employers make good profits and consumers enjoy cheap goods. Hunger analysts typically focus on agriculture yields and interventions with capsules and supplements. They rarely acknowledge that hunger is a deeply social issue that is shaped by the ways in which people treat each other. The central concept that drives the book is that in strong communities, people don’t go hungry. Strong communities have high levels of concern about one another’s well-being. People may provide food to one another when that is necessary, but more fundamentally, they ensure that all have decent opportunities to provide for themselves.There is no shortage of food in the world; there is a shortage of opportunities.

Kent's other recent publication, Regulating Infant Formula, assesses the widespread assumption that the government or some international agency is monitoring the quality of infant formula. Government agencies sometimes raise alarms when a batch of formula is seriously contaminated, but they are not monitoring the product to ensure the health of children. More than half the infant formula used in the U.S. is provided by the government, at no cost to the families. The government monitors the economic impact on the manufacturers, but not the impact on the health of children. It has been estimated that more than 900 children in the U.S. die each year because they have been fed with infant formula.

Professor Kent was invited last year by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to speak on Ending on Hunger Worldwide for its Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition. The report from this event is available as a pdf for download.

"Searching for Meaning" is the first article in the flagship publication of the American Psychological Association to specifically examine Existential-Humanistic Psychology -- and it features interviews with Saybrook faculty Kirk Schneider and Orah Krug, along with the published work of PhD student Elliot Benjamin.

On Friday, Oct. 28, Saybrook University issued the following statement:

Saybrook University's stated mission is to promote the creation of a more "humane, just and sustainable world." We call on local governments and the federal government to respect and support the Occupy movement protesters' rights of nonviolent speech and assembly.

Saybrook Alumna Lyn Freeman has been one of the leading researchers on guided imagery as a healing technique. In 2005 she received the first National Institutes of Health grant to study it as a method of support for cancer survivors.

Treatment for cancer can often leave survivors exhausted, depleted, and drained -- but modern medicine had little to offer them. Freeman's research was designed to give them something to lead them back from "surviving" to "health."

Based on the Phase I and II results of her studies, the National Cancer Institute has directed Dr. Freeman’s company, Mind Matters Research, to make its therapeutic intervention available to cancer patients and survivors.

While the company is launching the program in Alaska, there is every possibility that it will grow nationally. The Phase II grants Dr. Freeman received require Mind Matters Research to develop and clinically test their approach via tele-medicine and the web.

Dr. Freeman’s ENVISION Behavioral Medicine Intervention is one of a kind anywhere, relying on brain plasticity strategies that are imagery-based.

Strategies include imagery-driven biofeedback to assess and modify heart rate variability and temperature; art, storytelling, and sound to effect physiology and mood state; mind mapping memory practices; and many other therapies that are implemented and evaluated on a daily basis with cancer patients and survivors. Methods utilized are personalized depending on participant symptoms and response. The Intervention optimizes health promoting changes in physiology, biochemistry and mood state.